With US President Donald
Trump’s very personal
war of words with Kim Jong-ungrowing more surreal by the day,
perhaps it’s time America stop and reflect on it’s own reliability when it
comes to international diplomacy.
The United States and its allies continue to cajole and
threaten North Korea to negotiate an agreement that would relinquish its
growing nuclear and ballistic-missile programs. The latest verbal prodding came
from President Trump during his joint press conference with South Korean
president Moon Jae-in. Trump urged Pyongyang to “come to the negotiating
table,” and asserted that it “makes sense for North Korea to do the right
thing.” The “right thing” Trump and his predecessors have always maintained, is
for North Korea to become nonnuclear.
It is unlikely that the DPRK will ever return to nuclear
virginity. Pyongyang has multiple reasons for retaining its nukes. For a
country with an economy roughly the size of Paraguay’s, a bizarre political
system that has no external appeal, and an increasingly antiquated conventional
military force, a nuclear-weapons capability is the sole factor that provides
prestige and a seat at the table of international affairs. There is one other
crucial reason for the DPRK’s truculence, though. North Korean leaders simply
do not trust the United States to honor any agreement that might be reached.
Unfortunately, there are ample reasons for such distrust.
North Korean leaders have witnessed how the United States treats nonnuclear
adversaries such as Serbia and Iraq.
But it was the U.S.-led intervention in Libya in 2011 that underscored to
Pyongyang why achieving and retaining a nuclear-weapons capability might be the
only reliable way to prevent a regime-change war directed against the DPRK.
Partially in response to Washington’s war that ousted
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003, ostensibly because of a
threat posed by Baghdad’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Libyan leader Muammar
el-Qaddafi seemed to capitulate regarding such matters. He signed the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty in December of that year and agreed to abandon his
country’s embryonic nuclear program. In exchange, the United States and its
allies lifted economic sanctions and pledged that they no longer sought to
isolate Libya. Qaddafi was welcomed back into the international community once
he relinquished his nuclear ambitions.
That reconciliation lasted less than a decade. When one of
the periodic domestic revolts against Qaddafi’s rule erupted again in 2011,
Washington and its NATO partners argued that a humanitarian catastrophe was
imminent (despite meager evidence of that scenario), and
initiated a military intervention. It soon became apparent that the official
justification to protect innocent civilians was a cynical pretext, and that
another regime-change war was underway. The Western powers launched devastating
air strikes and cruise-missile attacks against Libyan government forces. NATO
also armed rebel units and assisted the insurgency in other ways.
Although all previous revolts had fizzled, extensive
Western military involvement produced a very different result this time. The insurgents not only
overthrew Qaddafi, they captured, tortured and executed him in an especially
grisly fashion. Washington’s response was astonishingly flippant. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton quipped: “We came,
we saw, he died.”
The behavior of Washington and its allies in Libya
certainly did not give any incentive to North Korea or other would-be nuclear
powers to abandon such ambitions in exchange for U.S. paper promises for normal relations. Indeed,
North Korea promptly cited the Libya episode as a reason why it needed a
deterrent capability—a point that Pyongyang has reiterated several times in the
years since Muammar el-Qaddafi ouster. There is little doubt that the West’s
betrayal of Qaddafi has made an agreement with the DPRK to denuclearize even less attainable than
it might have been otherwise. Even some U.S. officials concede that the Libya
episode convinced North Korean leaders that nuclear weapons were necessary for
regime survival.
The foundation
for successful diplomacy is a country’s reputation for credibility and
reliability. U.S. leaders fret that autocratic regimes—such as those in Iran
and North Korea—might well violate agreements they sign. There are legitimate reasons for wariness, although
in Iran’s case, the government appears to be complying with its obligations under the Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action that Tehran signed with the United States and
other major powers in 2015—despite allegations from U.S. hawks about
violations.
When it comes to
problems with credibility, though, U.S. leaders also need to look in the
mirror. Washington’s conduct in Libya was a case
of brazen duplicity. It is hardly a surprise if North Korea (or other
countries) now regard the United States as an untrustworthy negotiating
partner. Because of Pyongyang’s other reasons for wanting a nuclear capability,
a denuclearization accord was always a long shot. But U.S. actions in Libya
reduced prospects to the vanishing point. American leaders have only themselves
to blame for that situation.